Short Story . . . Inside
Camels killed him. Not the humped type, the non-filtered type. The kind cigarette companies’ peddle to children today from a mammal in a black leather jacket, sunglasses, and walks upright – the cool camel. Two packs a day, since he was twelve.
The old murderer finally got his due – an agonizing death and sent straight to hell. That’s what they said at his funeral and wake at Jackson State Prison. Whispered really. He was Eighty-five years old, my grandfather. I didn’t know him and really only saw him twice in my life. Once, in the cheap coffin at the funeral home provided by the state of Michigan, and once at his sentencing. Both times he looked frail and old. Lifeless. Soulless. His eyes had a disinterested, unrepentant quality. He glared at the sentencing judge, as he received the life sentence, he shrugged with the import of a speeding ticket.
Most of his life the black sheep of our family, and later a complete outcast, he was born in the depression era. He suffered poverty and racial injustice most of his life. I knew he served in World War II but no one in my family ever spoke of it or him.
T. Jeffers Barrow, TJ - my family called him, if they called him at all, lived a solitary life, living in the same house for sixty years before he was sent to prison. The neighborhood he lived in went from middle class in the fifties and faced decline into an inner-city urban crime center in the seventies. He stayed and endured.
After countless trips to jail for drunk driving, assaulting a police officer, and aggravated assault, he was convicted of the double homicide of two white men. They were in the process of attempting to rape a young black woman. It didn’t come out in trial. He shot them both in an alley downtown. This did come out at trial. During sentencing, he said nothing in his defense. The public defender did a poor job. An all white jury found him guilty on both counts of homicide and a weapons charge.
After the funeral, his attorney called to inform me of a will. I was confused because as far as I knew my grandfather didn’t own anything, but I told him I would be at the probate hearing when scheduled.
A few months later, the only present at the probate hearing was the attorney, the judge, a court reporter, and I. The court declared me sole heir. There had been a small trust. It kept his house out of tax arrears and provided for its up keep. The trust did not have much money left so the house and its contents were all estate assets. The attorney handed me the key and we shook hands as I left the courtroom.
I drove over to the house thinking I would check it out and call a realtor to immediately sell it. The drive took me through some neighborhoods I wouldn’t want to be in at night but as I got closer to the address white suburbia returned. Older houses, well maintained, with fresh colors and late model cars in their driveways.
I pulled my car into the driveway. It was an attractive single story house. Sandstone fascia, faded cedar sided, gray slate roof. It looked well maintained, like someone was on vacation and could return any day.
I got out of the car, circled the house, and came around to the back. I walked up the stairs to the backdoor and noticed the backyard was a beautiful garden. It had cobblestone-paved walkways wound around the small yard. Various colorful flowers, spice plants, trees of odd varieties, populated the space. A high wooded privacy fence encircled the garden providing and odd quiet and intimacy. It was glorious, a hidden garden beyond the reaches of a ghetto, a place of solitude.
The key to the back door opened it with little effort. Inside, a bright white kitchen was warmed by afternoon sunlight. I walked through the house and looked at all the rooms. I stopped when I opened the door to a spare bedroom overlooking the garden. I was hit with the immediate distinctive smell of paint and turpentine. On the back wall a glass double French door bathed the rooms interior with light. In it was an artist’s studio full of paintings.
Vibrant paintings of varied styles were stacked in the corner and one frozen in incompletion, clamped in the wooden easel. Baroque framed pastel floral paintings, abstracts in oil, pointillism, and impressionistic landscapes, hung on the walls like a museum. In one of the other corners was a beat-up guitar with various color paint streaks and fingerprints.
I thumbed through the paintings in the stack. I peered at the each painting on the wall.
The signature on everyone, in the lower right hand corner -T.J. Barrow.
I left the room bewildered. Who was this man? My Grandfather? A painter? An artist? Murderer? I walked down the hallway and entered his bedroom. Seventies’ vintage furniture, modest but functional, were arranged for ease of use. Lime green and browns, long out of fashion. At the foot of the bed was a faded army issue footlocker with an afghan checkered draped over it. I pushed the afghan aside, unclasped the buckles, and opened it. The smell of mothballs overwhelmed me.
Inside were the faded remnants of 85 years of life. A government issue .45 in a leather cases placement on top of a folded green dress uniform, gave the appearance of a paper weight on a stack of the neat boundles of a life lived. A full breast of medal ribbons hung from the front pocket of the uniform. More medals then I had ever seen on any General. Now dry roting symbols of blood spilled on foreign soils.
I removed the top tray containing the gun and uniform and underneath found two symetric stacks shaped like small pyramids. One stack contained from the bottom up; 3 thick photo albums, loose yellowed black and white photos bundled with a piece of twine, and a bundle of letters held together with a red satin ribbon. The other stack contained four framed diplomas.
My hands began to shake as I removed and tugged at the satin ribbon to release the letters. The first letter envelope had no external markings. I thumbed through the others addressed to Evelynn Annette Lafayette. They were stamped but not post marked. Two, addressed to T.J. Barrow, were postmarked.
The unmarked envelope was not sealed, so I removed the three faded pages from its home for the last few decades.
Confused, I drew the letter closer as I realized that the letter…was addressed to me.
Ok, there's a bunch of "thats" and a couple "was" but I'm worin on that...oops.
